


They find him in a shed outside the city

by Elpinice



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst, But the demigods are kind of immune, M/M, Rating for violence just to be sure, Violence, kind of zombies, not going into much detail with them though, vagabonding Jason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-10 16:26:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13505313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elpinice/pseuds/Elpinice
Summary: Jason hears Nico saying something, sees the girl turn to him. But he can´t- can´t even-His skin itches for him. His heart throbs so hard, he nearly breaks.Percy makes a sound in the back of his throat, like a cry, deep and desperate and heartbroken. His hands are shaking when he pulls them out of his pants.And Jason just moves.He always follows when Percy calls, nothing will ever change that, not even five years of monsters, vagabonding and ruthless killing.





	They find him in a shed outside the city

**Author's Note:**

> I don´t particularly like zombie AUs, but this idea stuck in my head, since I´ve seen [this](http://viriassecrets.tumblr.com/image/75082103076) beautiful piece from viriassecrets. (I know, the two are Jason and Nico, but in my head that´s disturbingly the exact way how i imagined Percy.)  
> So. Here you have the post-apocalyptic-Percy Jackson-au-oneshot I´ve never asked for.  
> It´s not betaed, so bear with me.

 

They find him in a shed outside the city, where he hides behind a broken fridge with a baseball bat in his steady hands. He stares at them, a mix of fear, determination and the willingness to kill in his eyes, the bat hovering over his head.

They try to soothe him. They´re bad at it. It´s the reason he decides to go with them. All the others have been sleek and calm.

They´re restless, unsure and suspicious of him.

They seem to be around his age, also unusual – but not unseen, he had some encounters with spotters his age, working for the labs -, and they wear beaten down clothes as if they just found them and put them on because of lacking alternatives, like Jason has found his worn black hoodie and the slightly too short cord pants.

They´re three, armed with a bat, a shot gun and a pan, of all things. One of them has an actual sword.

They say they´re on a food hunt, cans and pasta and stuff. He makes them show him their sacks of loot before he believes them. He has to show them his backpack, where his last apple, a water bottle, several packages of beef jerky, a blue baseball cap and a bedroll are stuffed. Even then they stay wary. The kid with the sword never leaves him out of his sight.

One of them asks Jason, if he wants to join them. They will be ‘hunting’ for the next two days at least, maybe even actual hunting in the woods for deer, then they´ll return to their base.

He immediately backtracks at the word base.

All the others said it too. _Come with us to our base. You will be safe. We´re here to help._

He is about to fight his way out of this, when the sword kid shouts an angry ' _What?!_  'at the face of the girl who invited Jason. They start an argument if Jason can come with them, the girl in his favor, but the kid doesn´t trust him. Jason doesn´t blame him. He wouldn´t trust himself either.

The girl somehow shuts the kid up (something along the line of ‘ _We found you in the exact same circumstances, Nico, so fuck off’_ ) and aggressively spins around to await Jason´s answer. She seems to be the one in charge of the small group. Her eyes remind him of his mother´s and he finds himself agreeing before he really thinks it through.

x

They travel for the next three days, hiding in some ruins or abandoned houses at night, sneaking around the suburbs at day, always on their toes for any sight of plagues.

The three are actually kind of nice, and invite Jason to eat dinner with them (can ravioli every evening, which doesn´t seem like an improvement from beef jerky and apples, but after six weeks of jerk´n´apple nearly everything is an improvement) and share their spare blanket, so he isn´t afraid of freezing at night like the days before.

They find a lot of food along the way, mostly in the houses that aren´t too much damaged, cheering them up quite a lot. It seems the last hunts hadn´t been that successful and their camp needs food. Jason is still not keen on the idea of camp, but delays the decision whether to go with them until later, cheering up himself in the unexpected idea of company. They´re the first human contact he had in months.

The kid, Nico, is not that bad, but his suspicion stays at the same level the whole time and he never sleeps when Jason is awake. The girl´s name is Piper. She´s serious but kind and looks like she used to smile a lot in the past, but forgot how to do it along the line somewhere. The third is a bulky Asian called Frank, armed with the pan and shotgun. He just nods most of the time and carries most of their stuff. In another world, they maybe would´ve been friends.

x

On the fourth day, they encounter a horde of plagues.

It´s horrible. Jason just turns around a corner and there they show up like a nightmare in broad daylight, when you least expect it. He manages to kill three of them, shouting the other´s names. The fourth plague is about to bite his neck off, when Frank shoots it right in the head, merely an inch away from Jason´s face. Nico and Piper fight on Jason´s right against five more, Nico swinging his sword and slicing throats, Piper yelling and crashing heads with the bat. Frank nods at him sternly and turns to shoot another plague. Jason turns too and they fight back to back, like brothers in arms.

They kill them all, but it´s a close call.

When it´s over, a frightening silence spreads around them. They´re all covered in blood and dirt, breathing hard, their weapons still tight in their grip. Nico holds a pretty bad wound on his right arm and Jason´s knee hurts every step he takes. Piper looks like a tribal warrior from the – very likely racist - video game Jason used to play when he was a kid, with blood all over her face, a broad streak from her left temple to the right side of her jaw. Her buzzcut is shiny with sweat and some weird slime that Jason doesn´t want to know the source of.

The plagues are lying around them, maybe two dozen of them. It´s like they´re the kings of an army of the dead.

x 

After that, Jason kind of belongs to the group. Seems like killing a bunch of half-dead creatures together is a first step to friendship. Even Nico pats him on the back and shares his can of peaches.

Piper decides to return to camp that evening, levelling Jason with an appraising stare. Jason shifts under her gaze, unsure what to do. He is travelling so long on his own, swore to himself and his sister’s dead body to never trust anyone anymore. But he´s also tired. Lonely.

Maybe even desperate.

They travel two days more, until they arrive at an abandoned, sordid industrial area. From there it´s a way on hidden paths through high grass and broken windows. Nothing in the area looks like it houses a base camp with around 40 to 50 people, but Piper assures him that that´s the intention. Nobody should find them.

They eventually come to an unremarkable door, where Piper knocks half of a complicated code on the wood, stops for a second, then starts again. Then again. Swearing, she just kicks the door and shouts, " _Open up_ , _assholes_." 

Nico snickers.

Something cracks behind the door and a shit eating grin appears in the door crack.

“Problems, Pipes?”

“Oh, shut it, Valdez. You always knock the sesame street jingle.”

Inside is a muddy, dark corridor, where the guy from the door ( _Mr. McFam Leo-nater Valdez_ ) leads the way to another door. Behind it is a large room filled with maybe ten people, most in Jason´s age, some younger, one or two older. Some carry bags similar to theirs, some are injured. It seems they returned around the same time as Jason and the three. (There must be other entrances, maybe this is the like a main hall or arriving station, Jason wonders.) Others help them getting rid of the bags and weapons, binding up cuts and bruises. It´s relatively quiet, an anxious atmosphere hanging in the air, full of hope for food, fear of bad news and joy of seeing the others alive.

Jason is completely overwhelmed.

There are standing tables in the far corner, sofas and cupboards in another, bookshelves next to a piano. Everything looks worn, nearly broken and mismatched.

Frank is greeted by a girl with dark skin and irritating mismatched lightish hair. She hugs him tight, burying her face in his neck when he lifts her up, and wraps her legs around him. Frank whispers inaudibly into her hair. Jason looks away, startled by the softness in Frank´s face, by the intimate gesture, the affection. He wonders if he can still touch somebody like this. The last person he hugged was his sister, her dead body lying on the cold ground of a parking lot, her remaining arm still pressed on the bullet wounds in her torso.

Piper turns to him and says something about stocking the food and bringing him to a guy called something weird. Nico is on his left side, gripping his injured arm, and hands Jason his sword to hold for a minute. He smiles at something on the other side of the room, where the sofas are. Jason follows his gaze.

Next to the sofas are cupboards arranged like a very small kitchen, with sinks and two smaller tables. There are two persons, a girl standing next to one sink, making tea, a guy sitting on one of the tables, talking to her.

And Jason stops breathing.

For a very long second his world stops, before his heart begins to beat twice as fast as before. He hears Nico calling something to them, sees them turn around and exclaiming happily. He feels himself making a step, as Nico walks up to them.

He feels nothing and everything.

It´s too much, too much, _too much_.

The girl, long blond hair and grey jeans, approaches Nico and hugs him shortly, before examining his injured arm. Jason somehow takes notices of this and the vague familiarity of her face, but his eyes never leave the boy sitting on the table.

He stands frozen far behind Nico, a backpack with a suddenly very heavy blue baseball cap in it on his back, a black sword in hand, his fucking knee hurting every inch he moves.

And Percy is right over there. _Right over there_.

He smiles at Nico and the girl, his hands in the pockets of his black sweats. His bare arms are covered in scars over scars, matching Jason´s own arms. And then Percy eyes fall on him.

Jason sees the moment when Percy understands. Sees him freeze and stare.

He doesn´t know what to feel, what to do.

Shouldn´t he be crying or laughing or something? Or at least say something. Get rid of that stupid sword.

But all he can do is standing there and stare at Percy, at this horrible, wonderful guy, he thought were dead.

He´d missed him, missed him so much. He had scratched off the skin on his scars in the middle of the nights just to feel something different than the aching. He can´t comprehend how he survived all the years with the belief he was dead.

Jason hears Nico saying something, sees the girl turn to him. But he can´t- can´t even-

His skin itches for him. His heart throbs so hard, he nearly breaks.

Percy makes a sound in the back of his throat, like a cry, deep and desperate and heartbroken. His hands are shaking when he pulls them out of his pants.

And Jason just moves.

He always follows when Percy calls, nothing will ever change that, not even five years of monsters, vagabonding and ruthless killing.

He´s is right there, steps into his space in front of the table, Percy spreads his arms and puts his hands on Jason´s cheek and neck, still sitting on the tabletop. His eyes are dry, but his mouth is silently crying for both of them. His hair is longer than the last time.

Jason doesn´t register that he puts the sword next to Percy on the table.

Because.

He´s kissing Percy.

Kisses the boy who isn´t a boy anymore. Who is a man now. Who is _alive_.

And he kisses him, kisses kisses kisses him. Drowns in the feeling of touch and lips and relief and Percy.

It´s a light kiss, full of wonder.

Jason closes his eyes and just like that it feels like he´s never been away from him.

It´s like they´re kissing after a date, where both don´t want the evening to end yet, soft, searching kisses in front of a door. It´s like the kiss they had shared this one time at Percy´s home, his mother in the living room, the two of them in the kitchen, cleaning after dinner, when Percy had sat on the counter, grinning like an idiot and Jason just had to kiss him.

Jason hears Percy sob into his mouth. Jason´s hands are on his knee and lower back, shaking.

Percy fists into the hair of his neck, pulling him deeper and suddenly it feels like their last kiss - they are desperate and running for their lives again, the echo of horrendous screaming and gunshots around them as they pressed their lips together, full of love and fear, Percy´s hospital wristband digging into Jason´s ear, just before the men with the tasers and guns - the ‘doctors’, the ‘nurses’ - came round the corner and they scattered apart, Percy´s terrified, wide eyes the last Jason will see of him, running in opposite directions to distract them, down the neon-lighted floors of the lab to the next exits, Jason´s bare feet slapping on the cold linoleum.

Then the moment breaks into pieces and Jason does too.

He clings to Percy, breaking the kiss in favor of burying himself in Percy´s embrace and hiding his face in his neck like the girl did with Frank. Percy wraps his legs around him.

 

And they just breathe and breathe and breathe.


End file.
